GRGR(29) - The Grid, The Comb

[Dave Monroe]

Yegg-zaktly.  Which is why I have no problem with notions of, the very terminology
of, "postmodernism," "postmodernist," "the postmodern," whatever.  Seems like most
criticisms levelled at, dismissals of, er, "it" don't quite take into account
similar problems, problematics of ANY such vocabulary, aesthetic, historical,
aesthetic-historical, whatever.  I mean, really, modernisms, not Modernism;
postmodernisms, not Postmodernism;   reniassances, not The Renaissance.  Indeed, as
"postmodernism," "after-modernism" necessaitates answering the question, er, what
then is "prepostmodernism" (necessarily the same thing as "modernism"?),
"renaissance," "re-naissance," "re-birth" rather suggests the question, well, what
IS being "re-born," what perhaps "dies" such that it can undergo "re-birth"?  What
exactly were the "Middle Ages," what was the ("the") "Medieval" bookended by?  What,
in short, is the beginning of the beginning?  the end of the end?  And all the
crossproducts in between ... And these are indeed questions the answers to which
will no doubt be--unavoidably--fraught with cultural, political baggage ...

jbor wrote:

> > re: chronology, well, I hope I didn't come off
> > as claiming that EVERYTHING written after a certain point, event, whatever, is
> > necessarily "postmodern" by virture of merely coming AFTER ... rather, what I
> > think I was trying to suggest is that certain ... qualities only emerge, can
> > only emerge, after a certain point, event, whatever, "postmodernism" coming,
> > say, largely in the wake of the tumults of WWII.  Which is not to say that
> > verything thereafter is postmodern, but which is to emphasize its historicity.
> snip
>
> No, not at all, but there will no doubt be those who apply this type of
> historical genre approach to say something like: first there was Modernism
> and then, because of the War, there was post-Modernism, and *now* there is
> something else. Historians and historicists love to construct eras, but
> postmodernism identifies that sort of thing as one of those grand
> metanarratives which are a little bit shifty because they set up all sorts
> of implicit value judgements. It places the historian or critic outside the
> frame for a start, solipsistically in fact. Those who are credited with
> "beginning" or "ending" an era generally have no idea that that's what it is
> that they are doing: it's the subsequent reader of the texts who turns them
> into innovators and iconoclasts. The example of "the Renaissance" is a good
> one, not only for the fact that it was essentially a revival of Classical
> modes and mentalities to begin with, but because it's absolutely a
> construction after the event. So, while one art historian starts off "the
> Early Renaissance" in oil painting with Cimabue or Giotto and Masaccio,
> another, who wants to de-emphasise Christianity in her or his construction
> of what "the Renaissance" was, might start with Uccello and Andrea Castagno.
> Life doesn't separate itself up neatly into little parcels of history,
> humans do that, logocentrically: "dividing the Creation finer and finer,
> analyzing, setting namer more hopelessly apart from named, even to bringing
> in the mathematics of combination, tacking together established nouns to get
> new ones, the insanely, endlessly diddling play of a chemist whose molecules
> are words. . . . "
>
> best
>
> ----------
> >From: "Dave Monroe" <monroe at mpm.edu>
> >To: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
> >Subject: Re: GRGR(29) - The Grid, The Comb
> >Date: Sun, Jul 2, 2000, 12:03 AM
> >